Musketeers Beat: Soft Musketeers Bow To St. John’s, 82-72, Get Humiliated On Their Own Turf

CINCINNATI — Sean Miller is concerned about his team. He has every right to be.

Xavier (9-7, 1-4), which opened the season 8-2, lost for the fifth time in six games and fell three games below .500 in conference play. The typically loyal home crowd began booing the team with nine minutes remaining in the game and Xavier down by 18. The near-capacity arena was half-empty with over five minutes remaining.

The bigger and stronger Red Storm dominated in the paint, outscoring Xavier, 54-30, in the paint and outrebounding the Musketeers, 50-30.

“It’s very alarming,” the Xavier coach told me bluntly.

The Red Storm took advantage of ice-cold shooting from the Musketeers, who knocked down just three of their first 17 shots from the field.

St. John’s raced out to leads of 19-8 and 23-10 before assuming its largest first-half lead of 14 at 29-15 on two Deivon Smith free throws.

Xavier lost a key piece in early October when 6-foot-10 big Lassina Traore injured his right knee going in for a dunk on a breakaway during a scrimmage. And then their best all-around talent – Zach Freemantle – went down with a lower body injury against Cincinnati on Dec. 14. Fortunately, they only missed him for a pair of games.

But what was alarming Tuesday night against a big, bad Big East rival was how small Xavier looked in not only size but also stature. Xavier looked like a team that was afraid to take on the New York City bullies coached by hall of fame coach Rick Pitino.

“I think we just play so hard that you just see it,” Pitino said. “We’re relentless on the glass. We play so hard defensively, we scrap, we move. We wanted to run with them. They are the seventh fastest team in the country, this number one in the Big East, and we wanted to run up and down for 40 minutes with them. … So they didn’t play well tonight. They didn’t play well. We played very well. That happens. It happens to my teams. It happens to a lot of teams.”

What’s frustrating about that for Sean Miller is that what Xavier teams in their heydey have been known for. Tuesday, they looked soft on their home court. As a matter of fact, it was the first double-digit home court loss under Miller since his first stint in the 2005-06 season.

“We tried something. We started Jerome (Hunter) and Zach for the first time all season, and that was not at all because of anything that Dailyn Swain did or didn’t do,” Miller said. “We just wanted to go older and bigger, give those two guys a chance in the home stretch of their senior year to start a game together, see if we can get off to a physical, more physical start. That didn’t happen. It didn’t happen.

“But if we look at the whole and you say, how, how have we been successful? Why have we been in every game? What have we done? Well, we have to first get back to being that. It’s not about talking. When you get an opportunity to start, or you get an opportunity to play a game, you owe it to everyone, including yourself to give your very, very best effort. I think if you look at St John’s, I think they play with high effort. If you looked at our team, as difficult as that is to say we weren’t able to do that.”

Ultimately, this falls on the players, and leaders like Jerome Hunter know it.

“We just know we got to be better,” Hunter told me. “We know Xavier teams in the past played hard, didn’t really give up like it looked like (Tuesday). But of course, Coach Miller just said he just things are gonna change. We gotta play better, and we gotta do better.”

How does Hunter account for being rebounded 50-30 and giving up 20 offensive rebounds as a team?

“They just played harder than us,” Hunter said. “They were the harder playing team, and we just got to take this and learn from it and make sure it never happens again.”

Conversely, St. John’s continued to make its mark inside the three-point arc, converting 32-of-65 two-point attempts while missing 14-of-16 shots from long distance. In its last two games – both wins – St. John’s has converted just 3-of-37 three-point shots.

RJ Luis Jr. poured in 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to help the visiting St. John’s Red Storm cruise to an 82-72 win over the Xavier Musketeers Tuesday night in Cincinnati.

Zuby Ejiofor also had a double-double with 18 points and 12 rebounds – including nine on the offensive glass – while Simeon Wilcher added 15 off the bench for St. John’s, which won for the eighth time in nine games. The balanced St. John’s attack had five players in double figures.

The win allowed the Red Storm (13-3, 4-1) to open with its second straight 4-1 start in Big East play. Xavier (9-7, 1-4) had three players in double figures, with Zach Freemantle scoring 22, Dailyn Swain chipping in 14 and Dayvion McKnight adding 11.

Trailing 37-25 on an RJ Luis Jr. layup with 2:56 remaining, the Musketeers went on a 12-4 run to close the half, cutting the lead to 41-37 on a pair of Ryan Conwell free throws with five seconds remaining.

Xavier had NCAA tournament aspirations when they won eight of their first 10 games. They rose into the Top 25. But that’s when shots were fall, Zach Freemantle was powering one of the most uptempo teams in the country. They have proven they are a good team in good times. Can they prove they are a tough team in tough times?

That will be the lasting lesson of Tuesday night. The rest of the season depends on how well they learn it.